Thread: Reality Check Not Working

Hi ! you can find lots of similar threads on the bottom of the page as this is a very common question / problem

I have also posted a similar thread while ago

good luck

Originally Posted by zebrafriek1

Two nights ago, I questioned what I was doing in a dream for the first time in my LDing experience l. That made me feel very close to attaining an LD. Yesterday, I had a dream in which I was at my school but something was wrong. On the first floor of my school, there were much more people than normal and on the top floor there was only one person. This caused me to do a nose reality check, but when I did it, I still couldn't breathe through my nose. Why didn't this work and has this ever happened to you?

Hey man, This is probably for one of two reasons in my opinion.

One, you weren't lucid and just dreamed using a reality check and it didn't work in the dream.

Two, I've had this happen before, where my reality checks don't work but I'm most certainly lucid and I'm not sure exactly what the logic is behind it(Like most in-dream problems), but I believe it's something to do with body distortion and just a lack of dream control.

After the reality check didn't work, what happened? Did you wake up, carry on being lucid?

Cheers,

Brute

Do you expect reality check to work when you practice them in the waking life? Expectation is one one of things that makes reality checks work, other being awareness.
Before doing reality check in waking life, fully believe that you could be dreaming at that moment, put emotions into it as well, like "Wow, am i dreaming?", look around and try to find something out of place, even after not found still believe that you could be dreaming and do an RC, while fully expecting it to work, and additionally visualizing it.

Same thing happened to me, I was quite disappointed. Not sure though, I know this post wasn't helpful, just thought I should give some input.

Another possible solution to this problem is cycling different reality checks throughout the day. That way, once you get the feeling that something is a bit fishy about the situation, you can try a couple. Likely, one will work, and if they don't, sometimes just thinking of doing the different reality checks raises your awareness enough to become lucid!